itch.io

...unless you have a Playstation controller

The game doesn't work with my PS4 controller and I do not think there is a way to enable it since DS4 Windows is gone now

I am very late to this party but I've known about it for a while. Now I have finally played the demo, and to completion. Here are my thoughts:

I love the visuals. The environments are beautiful and the enemies are very imaginative and well-animated. Great job!

1) I recognize that possibly ALL of these issues have been addressed at this point.

2) I use my PS4 controller with DS4Windows to play emulated games, so I know that it works. I didn't change any key mappings before playing Another Crusade, but when I tried to navigate the menu with the digital pad, it didn't work. The buttons are mixed up in battle also. My gamepad buttons were displayed in different places (in fact, your game thought some of them were XBOX buttons!) I guess it's still possible something went wrong on my end before playing, but I can't imagine what. I had to use my keyboard to play your game.

3) The placement of the buttons were different in the demo (for me) from their actual positions on my gamepad. For example, the X (confirm) button is on the bottom of the PS4 controller, but your demo mapped it to the left. Very weird, not very intuitive. Again, this could have been a messup with DS4Windows but the game wouldn't recognize the controller without it so I don't know....

4) Minor translation issues. "Demon King Arc" should be "Arch Demon King" because in English we put adjectives BEFORE nouns. There was at least one other thing but I can't remember, so it must not have been a big deal. Americans love to tell people how they should do things and we aren't hard to find in and around Mexico, so if you ever have a translation or dialect question, please ask us on Discord! Or if you want to keep it more secret, Cross the US-Mexico border, go to the curb outside Starbucks, and hire one of the many homeless Americans looking for gigs! You can pay us in pesos or OxyContin! :P

5) I agree with the other reviewers that the timed-hit system is WAY too unforgiving right now. I saw a comment about "principles of animation" (zeesh!) but the real problem is you don't have sound effect signals to que the player into when they need to press the button. Doing that will go a long way to solving this problem. However, I will also remind you that SMRPG allows players to mash the button almost as much as they want before the timed-hit pass/fail frames open up. Consider doing this:
    i) Create unique sound effects for the moment when players should press the button for ALL enemies.
    ii) Double (?) the number of frames allotted for "Great!" and "Perfect!" timed hits.
    iii) ALLOW players you mash buttons all they want up until a few frames BEFORE the "Great!" frames open. The reason for this is that players commonly press keys by accident while they are learning, and sometimes long after they know better. There isn't any feedback when a player fails the timed-hit test anyway, so it is a better to restrict failure to just the few frames before correct input would be accepted.

Also, part of the issue at the start of the game is that Rai attacks very quickly with his sword but other enemies attack very slowly. I am not just talking about slow windups, either. The delivering blows are also significantly slower. It throws players off. At least synchronize the blows between the player character and the enemies in the first area.

6) The music in the forest hurt my ears, I'm sorry.

7) I love how the characters look like they might have been carved. I think Niro's mouth could have a little more fidelity though.

8) Area 2 boss: The current strategy forces players to throw away turns attacking an enemy who can't be hurt until Niro's magic meter fills again. There isn't a strategy that avoids it because atacking is the only way to refill it. Consider updating the strategy if you haven't already. You might look to Chrono Cross (whose battle system was VERY flawed), as they allowed defensive maneuvers to refill the Tech bar the same way attacking does.

9) Please get LOTS of playtester feedback for EVERY AREA before you release. I can already see there will need to be a lot of fine-tuning to get the timed hits to a place where some players don't get so frustrated they quit in the first area. Some encounters will take a long time to feel balanced. This is the game I have been waiting decades for, but I want everyone to enjoy it.


Thank you so much for letting us play this demo! I can't wait to see more!